Modern consumers have a plethora of choices when selecting products to purchase. Generally, online retailers create webpages using product-driven approaches, such as clustering of products in inventory based on product types and attributes, instead of demand-driven approaches. For example, an iPod can have an MP3 player product type, and can have attributes such as black or white color attributes. Each webpage can display a list of similar products in the same cluster. These webpages can then be organized in a hierarchical tree structure based on hypernym dependency to generate a product taxonomy. Although there are several design criteria for creating a product taxonomy, an important criterion is intuitiveness, which can allow inexperienced customers to be able to easily locate the product type they are looking for by browsing the taxonomy.
Although the taxonomy can be intuitive for ease of browsing, the product webpages may not have high visibility to customers outside the website domain of the online retailer. In many cases, customers searching for a product start by doing a keyword search in an external search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Often, these customers use keywords as a query for product search, product feature comparison, price comparison, etc. To be listed as a high-ranked result on one or more of these external search engines and thus increase exposure to potential online customers, the online retailer's internal webpages need to have greater relevance for search queries on the external search engines.
The demand for products generally changes dynamically over time, and the demand in a market generally dominates the overall product-related traffic at external search engines. Yet product taxonomies at online retailers are generally relatively static in nature because they are created using product-driven, instead of demand-driven, approaches and because returning customers generally prefer a known taxonomy. Over time, the taxonomy may gradually evolve due to changes in clustering similarity metrics and/or changes in hypernym relationships, but these approaches generally do not take into consideration the current market demand. Furthermore, the hierarchical tree structure of the product taxonomy can limit the relationships between groups of products.
For simplicity and clarity of illustration, the drawing figures illustrate the general manner of construction, and descriptions and details of well-known features and techniques may be omitted to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the present disclosure. Additionally, elements in the drawing figures are not necessarily drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure. The same reference numerals in different figures denote the same elements.
The terms “first,” “second,” “third,” “fourth,” and the like in the description and in the claims, if any, are used for distinguishing between similar elements and not necessarily for describing a particular sequential or chronological order. It is to be understood that the terms so used are interchangeable under appropriate circumstances such that the embodiments described herein are, for example, capable of operation in sequences other than those illustrated or otherwise described herein. Furthermore, the terms “include,” and “have,” and any variations thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, system, article, device, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements is not necessarily limited to those elements, but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, system, article, device, or apparatus.
The terms “left,” “right,” “front,” “back,” “top,” “bottom,” “over,” “under,” and the like in the description and in the claims, if any, are used for descriptive purposes and not necessarily for describing permanent relative positions. It is to be understood that the terms so used are interchangeable under appropriate circumstances such that the embodiments of the apparatus, methods, and/or articles of manufacture described herein are, for example, capable of operation in other orientations than those illustrated or otherwise described herein.
The terms “couple,” “coupled,” “couples,” “coupling,” and the like should be broadly understood and refer to connecting two or more elements mechanically and/or otherwise. Two or more electrical elements may be electrically coupled together, but not be mechanically or otherwise coupled together. Coupling may be for any length of time, e.g., permanent or semi-permanent or only for an instant. “Electrical coupling” and the like should be broadly understood and include electrical coupling of all types. The absence of the word “removably,” “removable,” and the like near the word “coupled,” and the like does not mean that the coupling, etc. in question is or is not removable.
As defined herein, two or more elements are “integral” if they are comprised of the same piece of material. As defined herein, two or more elements are “non-integral” if each is comprised of a different piece of material.
As defined herein, “approximately” can, in some embodiments, mean within plus or minus ten percent of the stated value. In other embodiments, “approximately” can mean within plus or minus five percent of the stated value. In further embodiments, “approximately” can mean within plus or minus three percent of the stated value. In yet other embodiments, “approximately” can mean within plus or minus one percent of the stated value.